Going back home from one country abroad - limited to two suitcases each and maybe a third we are willing to shell out $250USD for that priviledge. Carry ons is for anything important.
How do you decide what goes home, and what needs to be tossed for good, sold, etc.
Any advice from someone whos been through this, I got less than 30 days to clear out this apartment.
I put ads out for my furniture at really low prices, but the culture here is - buy new, toss out when it gets old. I guess I got the old shit, because not even a used store wants this stuff.
Lived in SoKo for 5 years and then headed back to Canada. I sold off a ton of my stuff online to the local expat community. Furniture, etc. I ended up having to junk a ton of it though as Koreans are not really into the second hand stuff. I shipped a couple of boxes home to my self on the slow ground shipping route. It cost like $100 bucks, but was worth it to get clothes, documents, momentos back. I shipped that a couple of months in advance and it arrived with in like a week of when I arrived back in Canada. It cut down big time on the amount of luggage which was nice. My basic rule was if I can get the same thing at home, then get rid of it. I also went through a lot of stuff and just considered how much it really meant to me. Sorted it in piles of ABSOLUTELY to Meh to Bin it.
I took regular trips to second hand book shops. Whatever I could not sell I donated. I only kept a few pieces that I knew I could not find again.
I also gave 90% of my wardrobe to charity. Shoes were the heaviest obviously. I only kept the really sturdy pieces and special clothing like ski clothing, bike clothes, etc.
Furniture I try to sell to my landlord. As that failed, I gave away all of it. I could not be bothered to organize transportation, so I just put it up online, and people came by with their cars/rental vans.
Whatever people did not take by car, I brought to the nearby recycling plant. Luckily they also have a charity shop section where you can leave anything that isn't complete trash, so nothing went to waste.
I had a business class ticket for the move, but even so I sent one box via post for myself, it had all the random small kitchen stuff and souvenirs that I collected during travels and I knew would not need during the first couple of weeks after arrival.
It's weird, I honestly feel bad that nobody will take this stuff and it will end up at the garbage dump.
Minimalism is looking better and better... 10 pairs of shorts that look nearly the same, tshirts that I can replace, a billion pairs of socks, holy shit. Every flight I went home over these 6 years.. I hit up walmart and bought shit to bring here.. and now.. in the trash it goes.